The Web Site for Critical RealismWSCR Glossary

Introduction

These notes are intended to acquaint those new to Bhaskar's
works with some of the basic concepts Bhaskar uses to
formulate his positions, not to state the positions
themselves, and I hope they will be useful as an entry point
for new readers. One aim is to state the concepts as clearly
as possible in order to enable new readers to orient
themselves, therefore many nuances are not addressed. An
attempt has been made to state the point of a concept and
relate it to the philosophical tradition and/or to other of
Bhaskar's concepts.

I cannot pretend to be completely successful in these aims.
The material is not meant as a comprehensive glossary nor to
cover the same ground as those which Bhaskar provides in
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom and Plato
Etc., which vary in their difficulty. It is more in the
nature of a primer.

Finally, I should stress that these notes represent my own
particular background and path into critical realism and may
not be entirely congenial to those with a different
background, especially those who prefer historical approaches
to concepts.

I welcome suggestions, corrections and criticisms regarding
both accuracy, nuances, and the points of concepts. Please
feel free to distribute these notes to whomever you wish, as
long as they are preceded by this paragraph. This version is
an incomplete draft based on my marginalia and includes page
references to specific works which will be excised in later
versions as I correct errors. References to The
Possibility of Naturalism and Philosophy and the
Idea of Freedom are lacking, because the former is
unavailable to me and I have not had time to read the latter.

Bhaskar argues that the world cannot be conceived without
absences, to which we constantly refer and presuppose. The idea
is not that we add fictional entities like Santa Claus,
unicorns or caloric to the presences that we already recognize
in our factual discourse; it is rather that reality even at the
everyday level is inundated with absences (an empty glass, a
missing wallet, the failure of a monsoon to have effect, etc.)
(PE 56-7). Bhaskar does recognize fictional entities as part of
fictional as opposed to factual discourse, but even in factual
discourse we do not have to accord existence in the form of
absence to things we talk about, such as caloric (DPF 40-41).
Generally, absences are causally efficacious, such as the
absence of health, in contrast, say, to the non-existence of
caloric.

Bhaskar understands absences both as product (something not
there) and process (making something absent, or "absenting").
He also uses iterable hybrids of these: process-in-product
(for example, the causal efficacy of the past or things at a
distance), product-in-process (the exercise of causal powers,
as in ongoing social activity) (DPF 39; PE 55-6).

Bhaskar argues that absence is a concept that is alien to the
classical conception of the world which strived to ensure
that all action takes place by contiguous contact, yet that
conception is incoherent without absence (PE 57). For
example, the transfer of momentum from one billiard ball to
another requires spaces in between them. More generally,
absence is closely related to change and hence to cause. For
a change in something is the absence of something that was
present, or the presence of something that was absent; and to
cause something is to make a change, either of the first
sort, which is what Bhaskar calls "absenting" something, or
of the second sort, which Bhaskar calls "absenting absence."
Either way, to cause something is to make something -- either a
presence or an absence -- absent (PE 56).

Now there might appear to be a symmetry between absence and
presence, so that every absence can be regarded as the
presence of something else, and vice versa. The absence of
hair would be regarded as the presence of baldness, etc. Even
this trivial example lacks symmetry, because we understand
"baldness" as meaning absence of hair, whereas we do not
understand "hair" as meaning absence of baldness. Non-trivial
examples, such as the absence of health, bring out deeper
asymmetries. In a narrow sense the absence of health, say TB,
could mean the presence of certain microbes, such as is
occurring in America's inner cities, but as in the baldness
example the symmetry breaks down: we do not understand the
presence of those specific microbes as meaning the absence of
TB (we could identify them in an independent fashion).

There is a broader asymmetry as well, because the absence of
health in general cannot be equated with the presence of
disease. The presence of disease manifests itself in a number
of ways, such as the presence of microbes, viruses,
carcinogens, etc.; however, these presences are caused by the
absence of health practices, which is in turn tied to
politics. Consider another example: the absence of freedom
equated to the presence of oppression. The equation breaks
down, because the presence of oppression is manifested in
many ways (death squads, disappearances, jails, etc.), but
the underlying causes of those manifestations can only be
described as an absence of freedom.

The reduction of causal laws to patterns of events, a
position associated with Hume and classical empiricism.
Bhaskar holds by contrast that causal laws have a real
existence as tendencies which generate the phenomena (events
and situations) in which patterns are detected and which are
subject to empirical observation or verification. The
patterns are reflections of the tendencies, but the latter
cannot be reduced to the former.

Bhaskar designates phenomena generated by real mechanisms and
tendencies as "actual," but such mechanisms and tendencies
may or may not manifest themselves in actual phenomena,
depending on what else occurs (and such manifestations may or
may not be empirically ascertained). The distinction between
real and actual pertains to positivism, the distinction
between actual and empirical pertains to subject/object
identity. This is a key concept for Bhaskar and is closely
related to stratification. (See Differentiation and
Stratification; see also, Closed and Open Systems, Strong and Weak
Actualism, and Facts.)

Bhaskar uses this term in a technical, rather than everyday, sense. Underlying the everyday assertion "There has been a change in the weather," some philosophical theories see no change involved even if the statement is true. Yesterday's weather, today's weather, and tomorrow's weather are viewed as events which exist outside time and thus are "eternal." At most, a statement that there has been a change in the weather involves a switch in subjective attention from one eternal event (yesterday's weather) to another (today's weather), or from one aspect of a single unchanging Parmenidean one to another.

Bhaskar wants to reinstate the temporal aspects of reality, and he characterizes such theories as unable to conceptualize change, which requires viewing the significant elements of reality as tensed processes comprising irreducible internal and external temporal relations (DPF 45). The absence of change shows up in a number of ways in different theories. Token monism is the view that the world consists of unchanging tokens, each one a monad, an isolated Parmenidean one (DPF 44). For example, indexicalism (the world as a series of atomistic experiences), punctualism (the world as a set of atomistic events or facts), blockism (the world as a closed set of all past, present and future facts, all equally determinate) (DPF 252-4). Type monism is the view that the world consists of unchanging types and hence does not admit emergence.

A closed system is one restricted in such a way that laws
have uniform effects. An open system is one that is not
closed. Closed systems do not usually occur spontaneously in
nature and generally require human intervention, such as in
laboratory experiments. All sorts of intervening causes may
prevent a causal mechanism or tendency from having its normal
effect. The concept of closure plays an important role in
refuting determinism, because a determinist case cannot be
sustained without the regularity that comes with closed
systems, and ultimately it is shown that the assumption of
closure is an article of faith.

Classical field theories in physics (gravity,
electromagnetism, mechanics) assumed a pure world containing
only a single field and showed how, given any initial state
of the field, all subsequent states of the field were
determined. The question of what happens when several of the
fields are assumed to exist and interact created problems for
the determinism that was irrefutable under the assumption
that only a single field exists and is operative. Laplacean
determinism extrapolated this narrow truth to all of reality.
Closure is also closely connected to the understanding of
laws other than as merely patterns of events: that identity
can be sustained only so long as systems are assumed to be
closed.

It is important to realize that a closed system is not the
same as a spatially isolated system. To achieve closure one
must assure that there are no countervailing causes (of a
kind pertaining to the phenomena being investigated). Being
cut off from external influences is in general insufficient
to rule out internal countervailing causes. For example, a
system free of external influences is nevertheless open in
respect to Newtonian mechanisms if it contains quantum
phenomena (RTS 69). Quantum phenomena are treated by
determinists as irrelevant at some macro level.

Counterexamples like a switch that is thrown and thereby
causing some macro event if and only if a geiger counter
shows an even number at a designated time are considered
exceptions: determinism applies only in closed systems, which
will by (circular) definition exclude such example
situations. A potential field is deterministic, other things
being equal, that is, excluding quantum phenomena, not to say
other potential fields which are also deterministic! (See
Differentiation and
Stratification and Strong and Weak
Actualism.)

A completed science would mean that no further cognitive
transformation is needed to acquire whatever scientific
knowledge is available (RTS 58). This does not mean that
everything would be already known, merely that there is a
universal, objective, and unchanging set of concepts
sufficient for all knowledge acquisition.

A dialectical structure in which a part of reality is seen to
be a component of a broader, encompassing reality (DPF 19).
Bhaskar speaks of an emergent entity as being
constellationally identical with the ground from which it
emerged. A constellational closure means closure of the
totality constituting a constellation of phenomena. According
to Bhaskar, Hegel made matter a determinant constituent of a
closed spiritual totality. Since nothing can emerge from a
closed totality, matter has to be present (or at least
determined) from the start (DPF 24). Bhaskar by contrast
views mind as having emerged from an open material totality.

On Bhaskar's view, philosophy is not the result of pure
cognitive activity; it is, like all knowledge, a social
institution (see Transitive and
Intransitive Dimensions) and relies on presuppositions
about the nature of the world in which it is embedded.
Philosophical dilemmas are sustained by presuppositions,
whose exposure can lead to their rejection and the
dissolution of the dilemmas (PE 9-11). Such resolution is an
example of what Bhaskar terms "explanatory critique," which
is a form of transcendental argument.

A transcendental argument establishes a categorical necessity
as a presupposition of existing practices (PE 39). Bhaskar
focuses on what he terms denegation: affirming in practice
what is denied in theory, to deny in a theory something whose
truth is presupposed by the theory (SRHE 297-8). Bhaskar
views theories as social constructs whose existence have
presuppositions. For example, the simple theory "Nothing
exists" could be true only if it is false, because the
existence of the theory is a counter example to what the
theory asserts. More generally, human activity includes
theory construction, so the existence of theories about human
activity may have presuppositions that conflict with what the
theory asserts about humans and theory construction. A
trivial example of this would be the theory "Human theory
does not exist." More generally yet, human activity includes
attempts to understand human activity, so the existence of
theories about human activity may have presuppositions that
conflict with what the theory asserts about humans and their
self-understanding. An example would be "Human activity and
knowledge is completely determined by the laws of physics."
This example is not trivial like the other two and requires
arguing that the construction of such a theory about human
action require that reasons be causes (see Reasons as Causes), something
denied by the theory.

Critiques are different forms of transcendental arguments. An
immanent critique is the refutation of a theory by showing
that practices presupposed by the theory are in conflict with
the practices described by the theory (SRHW 14). Such
conflicts are termed axiological inconsistencies (SRHE 16).
By orienting critiques to axiological inconsistencies,
Bhaskar avoids the Hegelian idealist view of the world as a
developing self-contained system of thought (SRHE 15).
Bhaskar sees philosophy as dependent upon extra-philosophical
commitments (axiological standpoints and interests) which are
required to form subjective beliefs and the broader
supporting discourses (SRHE 18). A metacritique is the
identification of "causally significant absences" in theories
which lead to transformation of the practices that sustain
them (SRHE 25) A metacritique may or may not include an
explanation of the absence. If so, then an explanatory
critique may follow on to lead to a negative evaluation on
the causes and so lead to corrective action (see Fact/Value). An Achilles Heel critique
is a metacritique that not only explains why there is an
absence, but also explains why the theory is blind to the
absence.

Ubiquity determinism is the view that every event has a real
cause (RTS 70). Regularity determinism (SRHE 218) is the view
that every event of a given type has an effect of a related
type (RTS 70, where he seems to get it backwards). Regularity
determinism can only be supported by the assumption of closed
systems, which ensures a regular pattern of conjunction of
event types. Bhaskar supports ubiquity determinism, but he
stresses that the fact that an event was caused does not
entail that the event was predetermined. Although in fact,
say, event y caused event x, between the occurrences of y and
x there could have been some other event which would have
inhibited y from causing x. Regularity determinism has to
assume that there are no phenomena which could inhibit y from
causing x, so it has to take the future at the time of y (and
hence the future at any time) to be fixed and determinate.
Taking the future in this way, though, is simply to assume
predetermination. The inference of predetermination from
ubiquity determinism would require the additional assumption
of closed systems. Does the world consist of just
regularities, or does it also include mechanisms which cause
regularities, and which permit the manifestation of
regularities to be defeated?

It is useful to contrast the structure of a type with the
activity of its tokens. The structure of a type may be
completely determined by the structure of its components,
such as liquidity is determined by the chemical properties of
water. That kind of determination is ordinary scientific
explanation and takes place at the level of the real. What
Bhaskar objects to is the assumption that such scientific
explanations entail that the activity of tokens of a type are
predetermined. What happens to this particular quantity of
water may have very little to do with its chemical
composition, for example the diversion of rivers in the
Western U.S. to California due to political decisions.
Freedom and agency are explained by unactualized tendencies
which are real properties of the world but whose effects are
not determined by currently actual phenomena (see Actualism).

Bhaskar provides a fornal description of dialectic as a
"process of conceptual or social ... conflict,
interconnection and change" (DPF 3). Bhaskar views dialectics
as a real process which results in the removal of causally
efficacious obstacles to human flourishing. Such obstacles
are analyzed as "absences" which must be "absented" in a
real, contingent dialectical process of emancipatory critique
or "absenting absences" (see Absence). Ontological dialectics is
concerned with reality, epistemological dialectics is
concerned with what is known about reality, and relational
dialectics metacritically situates our knowledge in relation
to what is known (DPF 3).

Bhaskar sees humanity as sharing a core human nature (subject
to change) which manifests itself differently under different
conditions via various mediations. Humanity manifests itself
in different ways under conditions of poverty and conditions
of wealth. The core humanity grounds a core equality,
deviations from which must be justified by particular
mediations in concrete individuals (PE 113, 149). Things are
dialectically equal if there are no differences justified by
particular mediations that could justify treating them
unequally, and dialectical universalizability requires
treating dialectical equals equally. Bhaskar sees
theory/practice inconsistencies (see Critique and
Transcendental Argument) as arising from the lack of
dialectical universalizability (PE 135).

Stratification is the layering of ontology into the levels of
the real, the actual, and the empirical. The real consists of
real mechanisms which generate phenomena at the level of the
actual, which may or may not be observed at the level of the
empirical (SRHE 27). More generally, stratification refers to
the simultaneous causal efficacy of different emergent levels
(see Emergence). Stratification
is associated with a vertical analogy Bhaskar deploys
throughout his works and is related to causal structure.
Stratification also applies in the transitive domain of
knowledge as well as the intransitive domain, such as a piece
of knowledge vs. the cognitive structures which generates
knowledges by transforming anterior knowledges (SRHE 60).

Differentiation is the existence of open as well as closed
systems. Differentiation implies that laws and actions do not
have uniform effects, hence the origin of the term. The
distinction between mechanisms and the events they generate
(or can generate), which is stratification, is necessary to
account for why the world is differentiated (RTS 19).
Differentiation is associated with a horizontal analogy
Bhaskar deploys throughout his work, specifically in regard
to the causal efficacy of generative mechanisms in open and
closed systems (SRHE 40). Such causal efficacy is termed
"transfactual."

The origin of things with a degree of causal autonomy from
the existing causal level from which they arose. Causal
autonomy prevents the emergent entities from being reducible
to that from which they emerged. The properties of an
emergent thing are not predictable from properties at the
lower level (SRHE 104). For example, social properties in
general can only be explained in terms of other social
properties. There may be laws about biology that are not
reducible to laws of physics. This does not require some
special mental or spiritual substance which has properties
over and above physical properties. It requires merely that
biological entities have properties that cannot be entirely
reduced to mechanical properties, nor to electromagnetic
properties, nor to gravitational properties, etc., but are
formed from complex interactions of these. All these physical
phenomena can interfere with the effects of the others, as
when a magnet prevents something from falling. Biological
entities may be able to exploit real possibilities in nature
that are not available to entities subject to mechanics
alone, or to electromagnetics alone, etc. The complex
properties from all the separate physical phenomena may
collude in a way that transcends the effects of any one or
several of them without having to posit any other mysterious
force.

Emergent properties exploit possibilities in nature that were
not being exploited at the lower level from which these
properties emerged. In the same way, atomic structure
involves the actualization of forces of nature (the weak and
strong forces in the nucleus) that were not involved in the
component protons and neutrons prior to the formation of
atoms. New powers that emerge are only possible in virtue of
the higher level of organization of matter that evolves (DPF
51).

A transcendental argument from our experience shows this to
be correct in regard to the irreducibility of social
activity. It is the condition for the existence of our social
products that we be causal agents whose reasons are
autonomous causes. The origins of human actions can be
explained only by reference to social forms; the effects of
human actions can be explained only by reference to the
causal effects of beliefs.

Note that reductionism here is not the same as determinism:
reduction turns on which level of causal mechanisms
(physical, biological, etc.) are operative, while determinism
turns on whether those mechanisms operate in open or closed
systems (RR 114). Emergence is consistent with a diachronic
causal account of how the emergent entity develops from a
pre-emergent level of the world. The rise of social reality
can be traced in a causal chain from the pre-existing
non-social reality, but once it exists, social reality cannot
be synchronously reduced to the non-social part of reality
(SRHE 113). Autonomy is exemplified by the fact that
explanation of certain physical states (namely, ones that are
the result of intentional human activity) requires
irreducible reference to beliefs (SRHE 117).

In the epistemic fallacy, statements about being are to be
interpreted as statements about knowledge (SRHE 6).
Basically, being is understood as perceived being, something
that is unperceived being a thing-in-itself at best (and
neither real nor actual at worst). In the ontic fallacy,
knowledge is analyzed as a direct, unmediated relation
between a subject and being. The ontic fallacy ignores the
cognitive and social mechanisms by which knowledge is
produced from antecedent knowledge, leaving an ontology of
empirical knowledge events (raw perceptions) and a
de-socialized epistemology (SRHE 23, 253).

Bhaskar sees a close relation between these two fallacies,
especially in relation to classical empiricism. The epistemic
fallacy first projects the external world onto a subjective
phenomenal map, then the ontic fallacy projects the
phenomenal entities of that subjective map back out on the
world as objective sense data, of which we have direct
perceptual knowledge. So reality independent of thought is
first subjectified, then the subjectified elements are
objectified to explain and justify our knowledge.

Epistemic relativism turns on the issue whether science has a
universal, objective and unchanging set of concepts that
serve as its absolute foundation (SRHE 43). Its opposite is
termed "monism." Bhaskar says it does not and hence plumps
for epistemic relativism. He believes that all our concepts
and beliefs are historically generated and conditioned and so
relative to a perspective and subject to change. He combines
this view with judgmental rationality, which asserts that
science is not arbitrary and that there are rational criteria
for judging some theories as better and more explanatory than
others.

Epistemic relativism, of course, does not say that our
conceptual toolkit is arbitrary, a view no doubt supported by
judgmental rationality. This concept also permits an
understanding of changing conceptual framework as well as the
accretion of knowledge in an unchanged conceptual framework
(SRHE 52). Bhaskar often refers to changing and unchanging
knowledge, but he appears to mean conceptual frameworks
rather than the aggregate of what is known.

This distinction in many ways mirrors that of "epistemic
relativism and judgmental rationality." Bhaskar contrasts a
relative and developing ethical naturalism with a rational
moral realism. Ethical naturalism is at the level of moral
rules designed to guide actions, and these change over time
with changes in our ethical concepts (for example, "slave,"
"person"). Underlying these is a moral realism which grounds
our ethics and which can be rationally discovered via
analysis of the changing nature of ourselves, our needs and
our society. Bhaskar speaks of "ethical alethia, ultimately
grounded in conceptions of human nature" (DPF 211). It is
moral realism that prevents ethical naturalism from being an
arbitrary matter internal to a culture.

Bhaskar views facts as social constructions that are
conceptualizations of the world and exist in what he terms
the transitive dimension of science (RTS 57, 196; RR 9, 60;
SRHE 94-5, 283). Bhaskar conceives the world as containing
mechanisms at the ontological level of the real that generate
phenomena (events and situations) at the ontological level of
the actual, and we conceptualize these events and situations
into transitive facts, which are social products and subject
to conceptual change. Thus facts, unlike events and
situations, cannot exist in a world without intelligent
beings.

As our conceptual toolkit changes, so does the way we
conceptualize events and situations. Critical realism
conceptualizes events and situations in relation to the real
mechanisms which generate them, rather than conceiving them
as atoms that determine our knowledge of them without any
kind of mediation. (See Epistemic and Ontic
Fallacies.) Facts are not given to us in experience, they
are established through a social process. (See Transitive and
Intransitive Dimensions.) "Facts are paradigm social
institutions: they are possibilities inherent in the
cognitive structures that human agents reproduce and
transform but do not create" (RR 60). This view of facts
contrasts with "the positivistic concept of a fact as what is
more or less immediately apprehended in sense-perception"
(SRHE 95).

Now if we want to claim that all facts are relative to a
perspective, then it may seem that we have to ignore the
relativity of the perspective from which the claim is
advanced, which is termed "Nietschean forgetting." Bhaskar
resolves this antinomy by holding that perspectives are real
(PE 77) and are parts of totalities in which agents are
embedded. The perspective from which the claim about
perspectives is made is part of a totality essentially
relating the real perspectives the claim is about. This
totality is the stratified self, and its structure eliminates
the need for "forgetting" the perspective from which one
makes the claim that all perspectives are relative (PE 80,
198-9).

Bhaskar questions both the scientistic assertion that factual
propositions are value-free in content and the positivist
denial that value propositions can be derived from factual
propositions. The first denies that factual discourse can be
about values, the second denies that factual discourse can
lead to values (SRHE 174). The scientistic assertion,
conjoined with an extensional theory of meaning, leads to the
positivist denial: value-free semantic atoms plus the
construction of meanings from extensional functions of these
can only lead to value-free propositions (RR 99). Bhaskar's
view is that facts are social constructs in the transitive
dimension and so are bound to incorporate values implicit in
social relations (SRHE 174).

Against Hume's law that fact/value derivations are
impossible, Bhaskar notes that the exposure of a source of
untruth leads to a negative evaluation of it and a commitment
to eliminate it. It might be objected that Bhaskar is himself
illicitly importing the value of commitment to truth, but
Hume's law really says that following a commitment to truth
can never legitimately lead to a value commitment (other than
to truth) (RR 105, SRHE 184ff). A commitment to truth thus
leads to prescriptions for action, what Bhaskar calls the
axiological commitments of truth. The transition from fact to
value does not reduce values to facts, because the transition
is possible only if values have a real existence.

The breakdown between facts and values leads to a theory of
emancipation. The domain of a social science includes both a
social object (say, a social structure) and a belief about
that object (our understanding of the social structure in
question), and one of the questions for social science is the
match between the two. The answer will be found in internal
relations between them (SRHE 153, 176). How much does our
understanding (or misunderstanding) of a social structure
reinforce its existence, and vice versa? The answer can lead
to negative evaluations of the social structure (SRHE 153,
DPF 259, PE 109). Bhaskar claims that a structure of
emancipation is implicit in all our discourse and practice.

Causal laws are distinguished from patterns of events. This
position relies on the distinction between open and closed
systems. The position is established by transcendental
argument based on the existence of experimental activity, in
which a scientist is a causal agent who interferes with the
course of nature" (RTS 54). The empiricist conception views
laws as always actualized in empirical regularities. The CR
view is that causal laws are real tendencies which may not be
manifested (made actual) and typically manifest themselves as
empirical regularities only via experimental activity in
closed systems artificially created (RR 16-17). From the
point of view of causal patterns of events, then, Bhaskar
believes that all laws are most honored in the breach.

Bhaskar understands this term in two Kantian strands: an
immanent metaphysics primarily concerned with what our
knowledge presupposes about reality, and a descriptive
metaphysics concerned with the conceptual frameworks in terms
of which reality is thought (SRHE 10-11, 21). It is important
to keep in mind that Bhaskar views knowledge in a very
practical manner, so an immanent metaphysics analyzes what
our existing conceptual practices presuppose about the world
(see Critique and
Transcendental Argument), while a descriptive metaphysics
analyzes the categories deployed in those conceptual
practices.

Unlike Kant, who thought geometry, for example, was an
immanent feature of our conceptual structure, Bhaskar holds
that a descriptive metaphysics cannot be derived from an
immanent metaphysics. Bhaskar sees immanent metaphysics as an
"underlaborer" for social practices ranging from scientific
activity to emancipatory practices. Descriptive metaphysics
can "decode and decipher the conceptual schemes informing
those practices" (SRHE 22).

Traditional extensionalism can be viewed as taking a fixed
set of atoms of some sort that are part of a closed system
yielding actualist generalities. In a logically extensional
language the atoms are atomic sentences which enter into
truth-functional relations. For example, 'p&q' is true if
and only if p is true and q is true. Truth as a whole can be
given a purely extensional definition along these lines. A
major problem is that language tends to be highly
recalcitrant when you try to interpret it in exclusively
extensional terms.

This example is at the level of epistemology, but Bhaskar
sees the same sort of thing occurring at the level of
ontology and hence his phrase. The world is reduced to
atomistic states, and laws are sustained as valid by the
tacit assumption of closure. In opposing such an atomistice
view, RB of course wants to view totalities as other than
atoms bound together by external relations. The concept of
absence as essential to this picture.

The thesis that there is only one type of existence, namely
presence, comprising phenomena which essentially are
experienced, or at least experiencable. With no concept of
absence, there can be no concept of a stratified world
involving generative mechanisms whose effects may not be
present. Under that constraint the only realism which can be
affirmed is a form of actualism. Actualists or empiricists do
not deny the reality of, say, atomic structure; however, they
analyze that structure in terms of actual or possible
experience of the effects of atomic structure, so they
recognize no transfactual activity that occurs independently
of intellection. At a higher level, Kant understood space and
time as presuppositions for the very possibility of
experience, but he placed them in the structure of mind as
organizing principles for managing the actualist stream of
events.

By monovalence there is no absenting and hence no change;
there is merely a set of eternalized facts -- past, present,
future -- which exist once and for all in a closed set
(blockism). Alternatively, there is merely a set of features
of an unchanging Parmenidean one (punctualism,
indexicalism -- see Change). Bhaskar
sees ontological monovalence as blocking the raising of what
he terms "existential questions": if tautologically
everything exists, there is no way to say something does not
exist, much less to claim that its absence is causally
efficacious (DPF 234). For example, the absence of resources
for self-development is a constraint on freedom (DPF 280).
Ontological monovalence prevents the recognition of the
existence of such a constraint, which cannot be produced.
Politically, legally, and morally a monovalent society sees
nothing that prevents a person living in poverty from
becoming a millionaire, and freedom is understood as the
absence of a legalist prohibition, which is the narrower
concept of liberty or negative freedom.

Although Bhaskar views absences as real and apparently
subscribes to the view that everything is real, the
quantifier "everything" has to be understood as ranging over
whatever is real, not simply over whatever exists, at least
if "exists" refers to presences and not absences. With
existence, reality, and quantifiers understood this way, the
answer to the question of what exists is narrower than the
answer to the question of what is real.

If the mental could be reduced to the physical, then reasons
would be irrelevant to causal explanations, because the
reduced level would explain everything without the need to
refer to reasons. Therefore, if reasons are causes, the
mental cannot be reduced to the physical (RR 164-5). The
legitimacy of the scientific enterprise requires the causal
efficacy of reasons, because "in an experiment scientists
co-determine an empirical result which, but for their
intentional causal agency, would not have occurred" (DPF 52).
This constitutes an immanent critique of reductive
materialism.

Now it may be objected that if the mental could be reduced to
the physical, reasons could still be real and causally
efficacious, because one part of physical reality would be
causally efficacious on other parts. Bhaskar's view does
require an additional component: it is not just the reality
and causal efficacy of reasons that prevent their reduction
to the physical, they must be in some sense partly autonomous
of the physical, which is to say that they are emergent (see
Emergence).

It is possible to explain physical phenomena prior to the
emergence of mental phenomena without reference to beliefs
and intentional activity, but once mental activity has
emerged and causally interacted with the physical world,
explanation of physical phenomena requires ineliminable
reference to intentional activity. It is this difference in
explaining pre- and post-emergent physical phenomena that
establishes the causal efficacy of reasons in a non-reductive
sense. What is said here about mental phenomena carries over
to the wider social bases of actions.

There are two strategies to which empiricist accounts of causal laws are forced to resort in the face of open systems. Strong actualism is the view that complete state descriptions supporting causal laws exist, and are universal, but are not known. The empiricist analysis of laws thus becomes a regulative ideal, an unachieved empiricism (SRHE 29). Weak actualism is the view that causal laws only apply in closed systems, so laws are known but not universal (SRHE 28-9). Weak actualism is an empiricism that can be achieved in practice, but it leaves phenomena in open systems unexplained.

The inference from observed to unobserved things.
Transdiction has the following forms. Induction is the
inference from past to future, transduction is the inference
from closed to open systems, retroduction is the inference
from actual phenomena to structural causes, and retrodiction
is the inference from events to antecedent causes (DPF 232).
Retrodiction is the transition in practical explanation from
resolved components of a complex to antecedent causes (SRHE
108). The ability to retrodict causes presupposes theoretical
explanation and retroduction. Retroduction is the transition
in theoretical explanation from manifest phenomena to their
generating mechanisms (SRHE 108). Transduction pertains to
the applicability of laws discovered in closed systems to
open systems (SRHE 30).

The intransitive dimension in the philosophy of science
corresponds roughly to ontology and the transitive dimension
roughly to epistemology (SRHE 24-5). This tells us little,
since every philosophy has an ontology and an epistemology.
It is the rejection of subject/object identity which requires
a special understanding of their relation for critical
realism. Knowledge exists as a real social object in the
transitive dimension and is about real objects in the
intransitive dimension, which exists independently of mental
activity. Intransitive objects exist and act independently of
our knowledge of them (except when we use our knowledge to
intervene), so knowledge is irreducible to what it is about
and constitutes an object with its own level of social
causality (SRHE 51-2).

Note that knowledge has both intransitive objects, namely
what knowledge is about, and transitive objects, namely the
antecedently existing knowledge from which new knowledge is
formed (SRHE 54). Transitivity represents the social
character of science and thus is in opposition to solipsism,
while intransitivity is tied to the existence of causal
structures and is in opposition to phenomenalism (RTS 24,
26).

It should be kept in mind that the transitive/intransitive
distinction applies both to reality and to our knowledge of
reality. Within reality there is a distinction between
intransitive features of reality and the transitive
production of knowledge, which is a component of reality.
Within that part of reality comprising the transitive
production of knowledge, one can find the philosophy of
science with a distinction between the intransitive dimension
(ontology) and the transitive dimension (epistemology). One
can also find a metacritical dimension which scrutinizes the
philosophy of science containing those dimensions. So the
intransitive, transitive, and metacritical dimensions are all
found within the transitive process of knowledge
construction, which is itself a part of a broader
intransitive reality (SRHE 24-25).

A correspondence theory of truth (a proposition is true if
and only if it corresponds to the facts) is substantive only
if propositions and facts are independently identifiable. If
they are not, then the assertion of correspondence becomes a
trivial platitude, a guiding form for a genuine theory of
truth (SRHE 100). Since facts are social constructs (see
Facts), a correspondence theory
would be subjective and trivial as an explanation of truth,
since we will always ensure that our transitive propositions
and facts are correlated (see Transitive and
Intransitive Dimensions).

A correspondence theory could be framed differently, though:
a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the
intransitive events and situations it describes. Since events
and situations exist at the level of the actual and are
generated by a deeper level of real structures and mechanisms
(see Actualism), an adequate
theory of truth is surely tied to the level of the real,
unlike the reformulated correspondence theory which is
actualist in nature.